WASHINGTON  An intelligence bill the Senate is scheduled to take up after it returns Dec. 3 would block Americans from learning details of any warrantless surveillance program the federal government conducted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the American Civil Liberties Union says.

An intelligence bill the Senate is scheduled to take up after it returns Dec. 3 would block Americans from learning details of any warrantless surveillance program the federal government conducted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the American Civil Liberties Union says.

The bill would grant immunity from lawsuits to communications companies for any "intelligence activity involving communications" that was "designed to detect or prevent a terrorist attack" or attack preparations. Telecoms would need to show they received a "written request or directive" from the administration vouching that the programs were "lawful" to stop lawsuits.

Liz Rose, spokeswoman for the Washington office of the ACLU, says the language is a "blank check" that would cover not only a warrantless wiretapping program the Bush administration has acknowledged but any unconfirmed or previously unknown program. Last year, USA TODAY and other media reported that some U.S. telecoms also shared customer calling information with the National Security Agency as part of an anti-terrorism program that the administration has not confirmed.

"The immunity isn't just for (warrantless) wiretapping," Rose said. "It's for databases and who knows what else? The blanket immunity may cover (surveillance) programs we don't even know about yet."

The Bush administration has acknowledged that intelligence agencies conducted warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. callers in touch with foreign terrorists from Sept. 11, 2001, until last January, when the program was placed under the supervision of the nation's secret foreign intelligence court. The administration says the intercepts were authorized by a post-9/11 congressional resolution that allows the president to defend the nation against terrorists.

Last year's USA TODAY report indicated the sharing of calling records was to analyze them to determine patterns to detect possible terrorism networks.

The bill is carefully written to avoid confirming the existence of the domestic caller program, says Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department lawyer now in private practice in Washington.

"It says, 'If there were such a program, you could use this' " to avoid liability.

Neither the Bush administration nor telecom companies have confirmed the existence of the domestic caller program and have not commented on statements that link the program to requests for retroactive immunity.

The news accounts prompted at least 40 lawsuits against telecommunications companies by privacy groups representing telecom customers. At the insistence of Bush and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, language granting the telecoms immunity retroactive to Sept. 11, 2001, has been inserted into a larger bill regulating how intelligence is gathered against Americans who communicate with foreign targets or who are traveling abroad.

Such immunity is necessary, McConnell has said, to prevent the telecoms from being bankrupted and to encourage them to continue to cooperate with intelligence agencies.

Bush has said he will veto any intelligence bill that does not include retroactive immunity.

A House bill approved Nov. 15 included future immunity for telecoms that support authorized programs but not retroactive immunity.

In the Senate, committees have split on how to handle immunity. In October, the Senate Intelligence Committee approved a bill that included retroactive immunity. This month, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send a bill to the floor that lacked such a provision.

The Senate is scheduled to take up both bills, with the bill containing the immunity provision going first.

Both bills would also place more intelligence surveillance under the oversight of the nation's secret intelligence court.

Missouri Sen. Kit Bond, the Senate Intelligence Committee's top Republican, said pulling retroactive immunity "will likely unravel" the entire surveillance bill. "The stakes are too high to let that happen."

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., promised to lead a filibuster to block approval of retroactive immunity. "Retroactive immunity set the terrible precedent that breaking the law is permissible and companies need not worry about the privacy of their customers," Feingold said.

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